Masteries

Ferocity:
12

Cunning:
18

Resolve:
0

Welcome to my guide for Brand, The Burning Vengence. I hope you enjoy reading through this guide, and learn to master the champion while you're at it!

Now, on to the champion himself. Brand is a high DPS glass cannon mage that excels at burning your enemies to crisp with his continuous percent health damage and large AOE abilities.

On the flip side, Brand is practically the antonym of mobile. This means positioning is key and the slightest mistake can easily result in your death. You must always place care in where and when you engage.

Brand's kit has great combo potential, meaning that properly chaining abilities together is crucial for full mastery of Brand. You must master these mechanics if you wish to be successful.

In this guide, I'll try cover as much about Brand as I can, so sit back, and don't forget to comment and vote! I greatly appreciate any feedback and will try to respond to all comments!

↓ Pros and Cons

Pros

High Base Damage
With Brand's passive, Blaze, Brand inherently deals a lot of damage off the bat, even without items. In addition, all his other abilities deal respectable damage too. As the game progresses, Blaze's damage scales.

Massive AOE Damage
Most of Brand's kit deals area of effect damage, which is damage that can hit multiple enemies. This makes Brand extremely strong in teamfights.

Long Range Brand's kit enables him to deal tons of damage while staying far away from the squabble that is the teamfight.

Relatively Simple to Itemize
As an ability power champion, itemization is already decently simple (due to smaller pool of viable item options for AP). With Brand, it's even easier to choose your items, as Brand benefits greatly from certain items.

Cons

Immobile
Without any sort of dash, speedup, or blink, Brand is extremely vulnerable to assassins and suffers heavily from bad positioning

Skillshot orientated
Skillshots are generally hard to land against skilled opponents, and both your cc Sear and main damage Pillar of Flame are skillshots. If your opponent can avoid those two, they greatly reduce your prevalence.

Combo Based Kit
Because a lot of Brand's abilities require combos, mastery of Brand can prove somewhat difficult.

Blaze is an amazing source of damage that is often underestimated. Poking and waiting out the duration of Blaze can maximize the damage. This passive stays strong all the way to late-game, where Blaze + Liandry's Torment can completely shred the health of tanks with the percent health damage. Do keep in mind that Blaze can and will draw turret aggro to you if an enemy is a Blaze.

Sear

Sear is a rather straightforward spell with a slight twist. If a target is affected by Blaze, then sear will stun that target in addition to dealing damage. Proper execution is quite difficult and requires some practice to get right. Despite the fact that Sear is quite useful in terms of its utility and spammibility, we max it second because its damage doesn't scale as well as Pillar of Flame.

Conflagration is a targeted spell that instantly deals damage and will spread to other targets if the original unit was affected by Blaze. Usually this is used before Pillar of Flame or Sear as initiation but during laning this can also be used to poke people hiding behind minions affected by Blaze. In certain situations when facing mobile champions ( Yasuo) you may want to max this first.

Pyroclasm

Pyroclasm is what really compliments your teamfighting power. Be sure to let loose the Pyroclasm when the enemy team is grouped together. Right after your Pyroclasm cast, you can follow up with Pillar of Flame to deal tons of damage. Use Sear on priority targets like their carries or peel for your ADC.

Magic penetration is undoubtly the best marks you can take on Brand, as it amplifies both the damage on his abilities and Blaze, which can be quite a substantial amount of damage. With season 6, it also amplifies the damage on Deathfire Touch .

Seals

Armor seals are great in general as they fend off some minion aggro as well as auto poke your opponent may try to use on you. If you're facing off against an AD laner these are a must.

Health seals are decently strong and scale moderately well into lategame. They're worth a total of 215 health at level 18, which is more than a Ruby Crystal and can definitely help to keep you alive in clutch situations.

Glyphs

A mix of 5% scaling cooldown reduction and 5% flat cooldown reduction will provide both some early cooldown reduction for spamming spells and round out your 40% cdr for lategame.

A nice boost of ability power for extra early game damage. Would recommend if the lane is likely to be particularly easy or if you want to play aggressive early.

If you don't already know why Flash is so useful and prevalent in pretty much every game, take flash for the mobility, flashy plays (hue), and general utility.

Ignite on top of your passive and Deathfire Touch deals quite a substantial amount of damage. In addition the grievous wounds it offers can be quite useful against heals they may have.

If you're playing Brand support, Exhaust is great for peeling for your adc. Even in mid lane, Exhaust is still a great pick to counter assassins like Talon, since it substantially cuts down their damage and further makes them more susceptible to damage.

Not as strong considering being mid puts you in the ideal position to gank lanes just by walking there. The map presence is strong, the utility is still useful, and can be essentially considered as sustain in rough lanes.

No reason to take Bandit at all. No one's going to cs for you, and the meager 3 gold you get for bopping your opponent can't compete with the clutch play saves from the heal you get from Dangerous Game . Can often save you from Ignites or tower dives.

As a general rule, a Doran's Ring start will work out just fine for most matchups. It provides you a wide range of both offensive and defensive stats, as well as utility. It's gold-per-stat value is unmatched by any other item, but it's downside is that it doesn't scale into lategame because of a lack of upgrades for this item. You should also get 2 Health Potions as sustain to help keep you in lane.

If you're against a difficult matchup, or would like a stronger more aggresive start, The Dark Seal is certainly an option. It provides both sustain and some snowball power. It can be risky, as you lose AP if you die with stacks.

Early Goals

Rylai's Crystal Scepter has great synergy with Blaze since your passive burn will extend the duration of the slow. In addition, Rylai's Crystal Scepter is essential to peel from enemies, especially since Brand is particularly immobile and highly susceptible to being targeted. It also provides a strong amount of health and ability power, both strong stats that you can utilize. A second Doran's Ring early can help with mana problems and help slightly tilt the lane in your favor. Fiendish Codex builds into both Frost Queen's Claim and Morellonomicon, both incredibility useful items. Frost Queen's Claim is a designated support item, but the active is amazing for scouting out enemies, chasing, and escaping. In addition, it provides a much needed 10% CDR, which is currently difficult for ability power champions to obtain. In conjunction with Morellonomicon and CDR runes, you can easily achieve 40% CDR.

CDR Options

Standard CDR

Alternative CDR

Despite technically being a support item, Frost Queen's Claim is extremely strong right now. For an incredibly cheap price, you get a wide variety of utility, CDR, mana regen, and ability power. In addition, it generates gold, meaning it's final price is effectively about 1500 gold. When it's lategame and you're full build you can sell this item for an AP item with more damage, but early on it's too good to pass up.

You should always try to get these items. Just these provide a wide range of both offensive, defensive stats, as well as strong utility. Liandry's Torment is a beautiful item, the flat magic penetration will help rip squishies and the percent health damage can shred tanks. It is the "deal with every situation" item, and it even provides health. In addition, the duration is also increased by Blaze.

You don't have to follow this exact build every single game, but generally you might end up with a build like this. This build brings a lot of offensive and defensive stats to the table, as well as utility. Get Elixir of Sorcery before teamfights, and get Oracle Alteration if the enemy team has a lot of stealth, or Farsight Alteration if you need to scout (for things like Blitzcrank).

These are the staple spell combinations you should always be able to reliably pull off. Mastering these combos are core in achieving kills and winning lane.

Early Game Safe Poke

→ →→ →→ →→ →

This is generally safe long range poke in lane. Between getting a empowered Pillar of Flame and a couple auto attacks, the damage from autoattacks is slightly stronger early game. This is most useful during laning phase, especially if the enemy can be oppressive at closer ranges. (eg: Annie, Fizz, Kassadin)

Basic Spell Rotation

→→→→→→

Use Conflagration and then Sear to stun your opponent, throw in an autoattack, and use pillar of flame while they're still stunned. If your opponent was initially around half health before this combo, a couple more autoattacks and Ignite should be enough to net you a kill. If not, they'll be forced to back, at which point you can push the minion wave into their tower so they lose cs.

Advanced Combos

These spell combinations can be difficult to pull off and you may occasionally fail to execute them properly. No worries, practice makes perfect!

This combo is especially strong if you can pull it off successfully. I wouldn't recommend trying this combo with more than 100 ping. If you can successfully pull it off however, you've managed to stun them from a very long range and if they were half health at the start of the combo, a Pillar of Flame + Pyroclasm + Ignite and a couple of autoattacks should finish them off.

Brand support is surprisingly strong and has been previously endorsed by the Rito lords themselves. You can find their little article on Brand Support Here But I'll also cover most of the information this guide.

Blaze and Spellthief Synergy

The best thing about Brand support is that even a single hit on any of your spells will proc Blaze, consuming ALL of 's gold stacks and burn the enemy for decent damage.Always Max Sear

Unlike midlane Brand we max Sear because the mana cost doesn't increase with level and the cooldown decreases with level. If we max Sear we can spam it in lane all day long and you only have to hit it once to consume full gold stacks on .Pyroclasm Efficiency

Brand's Pyroclasm is really out of place in midlane unless the enemy jungler comes to gank. To rectify this, we move botlane, where we get an extra person to keep Pyroclasm bouncing. Dark Horses has kindly provided an video example.Core Items

Gold generation item and Sightstone are core items on every single support, with Brand being no exception. Following up on these two are Ionian Boots of Lucidity and Mikael's Crucible. If you've followed the rune setup, you should get a solid 40% cdr and enough mana regen to keep spamming all your abilities for years to come.Secondary Items

With your secondary items you're free to choose whether to pick more offensive or defensive items to suit your needs. I would usually recommend Liandry's Torment and Rylai's Crystal Scepter to maximize damage output and utility. You are free to interchange these items should the need arise.

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